R Kelly might be spending the rest of his life in prison after a federal judge on Thursday sentenced him to 20 years in prison for child sex crimes. This was after a jury found that he had produced three videos of himself sexually abusing his 14-year-old goddaughter.
In a victory for the defense, the judge ruled that all but one year of the prison sentence would be served at the same time as a previous 30-year sentence that R. Kelly received after a jury in Brooklyn convicted him of racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
“The nature of this offense is … horrific,” the judge said in explaining the 20-year sentence. He noted that Kelly’s sexual abuse victims would suffer from his crimes for the rest of their lives.
At the same time, he accepted defense arguments that Kelly might not even make it to 80. So handing him a consecutive lengthy sentence, rather than allowing him to serve all but one year of it simultaneously, didn’t make much sense.
Previously
Kelly was jailed in June 2022 for three decades for sex trafficking and racketeering after a trial in New York. Several months later, he was convicted in a second federal trial in Chicago of enticing minors for sex and producing child sexual imagery.
The former singer received a 20-year term for those crimes. But 19 will be served at the same time as the previous sentence. So if served in full, he will be behind bars until he is in his mid-80s.
By Wanjiru Mbaru